Gimbals

Gimbals

Moog Biaxial Gimbals are well suited for performing electric-propulsion thruster articulation, spaceflight tracking, scanning, and positioning functions. Applications include solar array drives, antenna positioners, and optical telescope and instrument drives. The gimbals are designed in modular fashion, making it easy to create units, elevation-over-azimuth configuration, or cross-axis configuration—the difference is in the sign of the interaxis and/or interface bracket or brackets.

Biaxial Gimbal Assembly

Moog biaxial gimbals are well suited for performing spaceflight tracking, scanning, and positioning functions. Applications include solar array drives, antenna positioners, and optical telescope and instrument drives. The biaxial gimbal supports and positions the majority of larger payloads and can be configured for limited rotation with the inclusion of range-defining hard stops on actuator outputs or for continuous rotation on one or both axes with the integration of a slip ring assembly. The unit is driven by the standard Moog Electronic Control Unit.

Missions: IRIDIUM, ACTS, ADEOS, COMETS

Enhanced Pointing Gimbal Assembly (EPGA)

The EPGA is specifically designed for applications requiring high torque, high stiffness, load carrying capability, and small increment output step size. In order to accommodate a wide variation of customer needs, Moog has successfully qualified two variations of the EPGA: 3-Phase Motor and 4-Phase Motor.

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Electric Propulsion Gimbal Assemblies

Moog offers electric propulsion thruster gimbal assemblies that range in size from small to large, and in return, are intended to point various sized Xenon thruster engines. The gimbals can be configured for wide rotation on both axes, limited with the inclusion of range defining hard stops on the thruster axes. The gimbals provide vector-pointing capabilities for various propulsion thruster configurations including Xenon, Arc-jet and NTO/MMH. There are multiple Model-T TGAs in flight with more planned for launch.

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Ion Thruster Gimbal

Moog developed a gimballing mechanism designed to provide the thrust vector maneuvering for Hayabusa’s Ion thrusters compatible with electric propulsion technology. The amount of mass the gimbal was designed to carry from Earth to space was significantly large as compared to the allocated weight budget of the gimbal.